Of course he was poor. He could only boast a bob wig, a base thing,
which, for all the show it made, might have been a man's own hair. He
wore no sword. His hat lacked feather and lace. His coat and breeches
were but black drugget, shiny at each corner of him and rusty everywhere.
His stockings were worsted, and darned even on his excellent calves. His
shoes had strings where buckles should have been, and mere black
heels--and low heels at that. As you know, he could walk at a round pace
with them--a preposterous, vulgar thing. There was nothing in him to give
this poverty a romantical air. To be sure, he had admirable legs, but the
rest was neither good nor bad. He was of the middle size and a wholesome
complexion. You would look at him long and see nothing rare enough to be
worth looking at. If you looked longer yet you might begin to be
surprised: his so ordinary face was extraordinary in its lack of
expression.

The man who owned it must be either very dull of heart and mind, or
self-contained and of self-control beyond the common. But whatever the
heart might be, no one ever took the eyes for the eyes of a fool. They
were keen, alert, perpetually on guard. There is a letter extant--it was
indeed a dear friend who wrote it--which mocks at Harry for his "curst
stand-and-deliver stare." But it is a queer thing that most men had to
know Harry Boyce a long time before they remarked that his eyes were not
quite of the same colour. The common English grey-green-blue was in both
of them, but one had a bluer glint than the other. The oddity, when it
was discovered, seemed to make the challenge of the eyes more defiant and
more baffling, as though they gleamed from the shadow of a mask.

Not that anyone cared yet whether he wore a mask or his soul in that
placid, ordinary face. Who should care a pinch of snuff for "a scholar
just from his college broke loose" with a penny farthing in his pocket,